Health care in recent times has come to the crossroads of opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Opportunities have been many, in the past couple of decades. Life expectance has increased and so has geriatric population, quite noticeably across different parts of the world. Climatic change has drastically affected the health status. Life style and stress in the recent era have added on to the complexities of understanding disease burden and the treatments thereof. Understand diseases burden and its treatment.

Integration of various health sciences has become mandatory for providing better health care to the society. Various advances in health sciences need to be directed towards non-invasive diagnostic procedures such as liquid biopsy, cost-effective therapeutics-like use of platelet-rich fibrin in regeneration, promotion of alternative medicine-like Ayurveda for specific conditions. This is the time to come together and move ahead.

Professionals involved in oral health care can play a very important role in this paradigm shift in health care. An enormous amount of scientific evidence, of contribution of oral health to longer healthy life expectancy, recognising the significance of maintaining oral and dental health throughout the life becomes a fundamental factor for improving the quality of life, helping to protect against non-communicable diseases and contributing towards preventing the aggravation of certain non-communicable diseases-like diabetes or adverse pregnancy outcome. It can also contribute to longer healthy life expectancy.

Health professionals have a responsibility to influence and contribute to policies at local and national levels that demonstrate commitment to public health, as this will define how future societies take shape around our world.